Chip Chick
In October, the mother of this man’s two children (a 6-year-old son and a 4-year-old daughter) was arrested for credit card fraud.
After her arrest, he got full custody of the children. Since then, their children have repeatedly asked them where their mother was and what was happening.
At first, he told his children that their mother was on a work trip, but they only accepted this explanation for a couple of weeks before they started asking more questions, for which he couldn’t come up with explanations.
He’d been communicating with his in-laws and allowing them to watch his children, and he asked how they explained his children’s mother’s absence.
“They said, ‘We tell them she’s getting help,’ so I started this as well, to be consistent, and that’s been working,” he said.
He encouraged his children to draw pictures for their mother, and he mailed them to her so his children were aware that their mother saw their pictures.
His children’s mother was sentenced last week to 12 years in federal prison. He attended the sentencing alone and asked his in-laws to babysit while he went to the courthouse.
“My daughter told me again the other night, ‘I miss Mommy.’ I replied, ‘I know. I miss her, too, but Mommy is in trouble right now, so she has to go to jail for a while,'” he explained.
He and his children’s mother have explained that jail is where people go when they misbehave and have joked that they’d send their daughter to jail if she misbehaved. Later, his daughter explained where their mother was to his son.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
